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Asparagus with Melted Butter

Asparagus is boiled, served on toast, and accompanied by drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 75 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Asparagus with Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the tough white ends from the asparagus and tie it in packages of about a dozen stalks each.

  2. Prepare drawn butter according to the recipe for caper sauce, omitting the capers.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the asparagus in the boiling water with the salt for about 20 minutes until done.

  2. Dip the toast briefly in the asparagus boiling water and place it at the bottom of the serving dish.

  3. Arrange the asparagus in a ring on the toast with the heads in the center.

  4. Serve the drawn butter in a gravy boat alongside the asparagus.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Asparagus + caperstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Asparagus
Forms the main vegetable; cooking softens its fibers until tender.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty moisture that complements the asparagus.
Toast
Absorbs moisture from the cooking water and serves as a base under the asparagus.

The step that matters

Boil the asparagus until done. Overcooking turns asparagus soft and dull in color, while undercooking leaves it fibrous and tough. Timing the boil to tenderness keeps the spears firm yet tender.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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